Duke Nukem Forever has been in production for twelve years, and that means that companies like Gamestop and EB Games have potentially made millions of dollars accepting pre-orders for the game 3D Realms just never could get their act together enough to make.

It’s commonly been assumed that if you were foolish enough to pre-order Duke Nukem Forever, you may as well have flushed your money down the toilet. But Gearbox Software, which is now finishing up the title, is trying to get retailers to do the right thing.

“There are a lot of people who pre-ordered the game,” said Gearbox President Randy Pitchford. “We’ve been starting to talk with retailers because we didn’t take them directly, and 3D Realms didn’t take them, it was all retailers going ‘I’m going to take this guy’s money.’

“We’ve started to engage them, saying ‘Hey, you’ve got customers who you made a promise to, and any bad feeling they have will reflect on us, so can we work together to do something for those people?’

“I don’t know what we can do yet, but something should be done for the people who pre-ordered.”

Let’s hope they succeed. Companies have made a lot of money off of Duke Nukem Forever‘s development hell.